When you were 14 years old your father was 42 years old which was three times your age now he is twice your age how old are you?

Answer 1

"When you were 14 years old, your father was 42 years old".

- that gives us the difference in age. The father is 42 - 14, or 28 years older than the child.

"which was three times your age"

- that's a decoy. It's true, 14 times three is equal to 42, but it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know.

"now he is twice your age, how old are you?"

- this is the other piece of information we need. Combining this with the first statement will let us find the answer:

Let the father's age be "F", and the child's age be "C". We can then say that, given the first statement:

F = C + 28

because that statement told us that the father is twenty-eight years older than the child.

We can also say:

F = 2C

as that's what the last statement tells us. Now all we need to do is combine those two statements:

F = C + 28

∴ 2C = C + 28

∴ C = 28

So the child is now 28 years old. You can also find the father's age by plugging it into one of the previous equations. We know that F = 2C, so the father's age is 2 * 28, which equals 56.